History
Throughout the history of sports, people have always thought that men were the only ones that were able to play sports. People have begun to change their minds little by little but it is still thought that men are better playing sports than women are. When people think of athletes, they usually think of the superstar males that get the big scholarships to division one schools and have the potential to make it into professio
nal sports. Even though male athletes seem to be what people think of, sports do prove to be helpful in developing both leadership and social skills for both male and female athletes. Title IX has helped to change the way people think but it has not turned it around completely. Once Title IX was passed, coaches of some men’s sports argued that women athletes were going to take the place of the men playing sports. The truth is that the total number of athletes has increased, not just the number of female athletes.
Equality
Women athletes simply want equality among sports. They would like the be able to have just as many sports to chose from as the men do so that they have the same opportunity to get scholarships for athletics just as male athletes do. Many male athletes are forced to perform so that they are able to get scholarships and make it to professional sports, if they did not have to be the center of attention then they would not be forced to work as hard. Having women that are able to play the same sports professionally then that would take some of the focus off male athletes to make it to professional sports. Since female sports have become more popular over the years young girls are able to have role models in sports that they like to play. Professional women athletes have proven to gradually increase thee number of younger girls that play sports because they want to be just like them, which only happened for young boys for a while because there were no professional women sports.
There are even more male coaches then female coaches. With the passing of Title IX, the salaries of women’s sports coaches increased so male coaches wanted those jobs as well since there was not as large of a salary difference between coaching a men’s team or a women’s team. Men coach about half of women’s teams but women coach only about 2% of men’s teams. Even though Title IX did improve the situation, it did not take care of the problem. The fact is that even today, women still are paid less and there is usually an issue with homophobia with women’s sports. People make stereotypes of different female sports teams but not of the male counterparts.
“The first woman was created from the rib of a man. She was not made from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him.” -Anonymous